A long night, that seems forever ago now, on a couch filled with bedbugs in Singapore, I was frantically sending out applications to every single company that did anything remotely relevant to Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in India. Things were not looking very good. My internship offer had just fallen through and I was left without anywhere to go after my thesis. I vividly remember, the long list of companies I had in my notebook, most of which had been struck out because I had either received a reject or no response for a long time. As a Mechanical Engineer pursuing a thesis in fluid dynamics and having just a couple of online machine learning courses under my belt, I had no business getting an internship at a machine learning company. And yet, I finally got an offer from Uncanny Vision. At that point, I knew very little about the company because their highly outdated website, except that they were on a list of the top 10 AI startups in India. That(and the fact that I had no alternate plan) was enough for me to take a leap of faith and today looking back, I couldn't have made a better decision.

My first day on the job was not what I had anticipated. I expected them to assign me a desk and give me a bunch of tasks and not interact with me until I had completed it. But, it couldn't have been more different. I was barely given any work to do, people were so cordial and friendly and walked me through the day so smoothly, which is incredibly hard to do with an awkward person like me who doesn't say a word. But the gesture that made me the happiest was that I had a desk with my name. I am certainly a sucker for small things that make me feel important like that. I remember texting a bunch of my friends and my dad out of pure happiness, "I am getting paid to write code". In retrospect, I should have realized the value of the company and the people right that day. Today, almost one year later as I write this, I truly see the value and cannot appreciate that opportunity enough. I wanted to do this the day I quit the company to start my Masters, but I put it off with the hope that I could gain more perspective and do more justice after a few months of being away from it all and I am so glad I did. I write this today to mostly express my gratitude and happiness that I have gained from January 2018 to August 2019. This past year of my Masters has truly only reinforced the value of my memories and experiences of my time at Uncanny Vision and so I believe it is only fitting that I write about it in my first post for my website.

I can certainly go on talking about how every single day, every single person made a huge difference in my life and taught me things, I had never learnt all my life and in most cases didn't even know I needed to learn. I hoped working at a startup would teach me to push my limits, work harder and be more invested in my work, but that was just the tip of the iceberg and I can't even begin to list them all, quite a few I'm sure I don't even realise the value of just yet. My strategy coming into this was to write a couple of short interesting memories that will stay with me forever, but I have now stared at the screen for almost 4 hours and I just can't pick which ones I want to share. Each one is more valuable than the other, more interesting than the next in it's own way. Each one so unique and so diverse that choosing a couple would just not do justice in my mind to the people and the company.

The scrum meetings we strived to make shorter every day, but ended up always getting longer. The joking about the Japanese and their interesting ways of expression classification, the highly forced discussions about basketball and Lebron's greatness(or lack thereof), chai pe charcha discussions that swiftly moved from politics to sports to trip planning in a matter of minutes, our attempts at sports in not so convenient play arenas, long discussions about where to go for lunch that landed us in Udupi Park most days, constant debate about shifting to a better office and random yet hilarious and fun push up competitions. Not to mention, the long nights before releases, with some extremely hardworking employees and some tag alongs like me, the satisfaction of a successful release and the satisfaction of a team outing being organized(and me winning a competition just because I was not drunk), and finally and most importantly, all those long days of CUDA errors, where I believed that the computers had turned against us, and the best of them all the ECC uncorrectable error which I think we should consider as one of biggest achievements for even facing it. One of the things that I will remember for the rest of my life undoubtedly though interestingly enough, is not from the time I was working(so is the picture for this post - The only decent picture I have of my time at Uncanny Vision is at a Qualcomm conference I attended in San Diego). A couple months into my Masters at UCSD, I got a visit from Navanee(co-founder). He treated me to all the vegetarian food available at that mexican restaurant. It really made me feel at home and I remember coming back home that night and realising, that there are really just a handful of people in the world who would do something like for me, especially with such a packed schedule. That day, I realized how impactful and life changing those one and a half years had been to me and I never had the slightest realization of it in those years and never sufficiently expressed my gratitude.

I have always thought about this but never appreciated it sufficiently and is certainly a feeling that has been amplified significantly this past year. Working at Uncanny Vision never felt like work to me. As clichè and yet impractical as that my sound, there was never a single morning that I woke up and didn't feel like going into work or considered it a burden to get to work. There were certainly a lot of days when I didn't feel like working, or wasn't productive at all, but never have I even had a passing thought of "I wish I didn't have to go to work today". In today's world of utopian expectations, with practically everyone seemingly unhappy with their jobs I think I am extremely lucky to have had that opportunity. I certainly did my fair share of complaining about the food, the amenities, about our office not being fancy enough, not having enough recreational activities and team outings as well as the work on some days but not one day did I regret or negatively view having to go to work. Reflecting now, I believe that I subconsciously knew everyone viewed it the same way and that I could always bank on the people and the work to make the day interesting. I was also able to turn down a fairly higher paying job offer from a competitor without the slightest hesitation which at the time I didn't think about too much, but now as I have to apply and find a new one, seems like a huge deal and I truly appreciate. I would also be remiss if I didn't mention that some of the incessant pestering and complaining certainly paid off and I am also extremely proud to be part of that rare breed of Uncanny Employee that attended two team outings in less than two years and got a chance to be part of a bunch of most long, interesting sometimes friendship threatening game nights. My last day at work, I was gifted a Golden State Warriors hoodie which is certainly amongst the best gifts I have been given, and I use it everywhere until today, to flaunt at least in my mind in the US, that I am a huge Golden State Warriors fan but more importantly an employee of Uncanny Vision. It also, has a word cloud at the back that expresses a different side of my relationships with the people at the company, but I'd rather not get into that and save myself some embarrassment.

Finally, as one of my friends always has said, my "graph of life" has started moving upward ever since I started working at Uncanny Vision and it's quite hard to deny the truth in that. Things have certainly been rough at times, but I have always fallen forward and progressed, making the decision to join Uncanny Vision seem more and more serendipitous in retrospect. What the company has done for my life is certainly fuel for me to get better and I sincerely hope that someday, I can pay it back to the company, or if not at least pay it forward to another student like me desperately looking for an opportunity.